


finders keepers

by v3ilfire



Series: between fields of fire and miles to go [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 07:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7158710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much to Camilla’s surprise, the great hall was… pristine, really. It had only been six, maybe seven months since Fergus moved back, and already the place was starting to come together again. Camilla shuffled awkwardly in her place; for some reason she thought she’d… feel where Ser Gilmore had fallen. Like she’d just know exactly where he took his last breath, or… or something like that, anyhow. There was an eerie calm about the whole space that settled over her, and all of her preparation against whatever nightmare still resided in these halls felt… presumptuous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	finders keepers

**** Highever had been almost - not completely, but  _ almost _ untouched by the Blight. Camilla figured it all would have been in better condition had it not been under Arl Howe’s complete and utter negligence at the time, but it still stood and Fergus had wasted no time in implementing his plans to restore both the castle and its surrounding town. He probably got a discount on all the work in her name, too. Asshole. 

She’d been asked if she was sure she wanted to do this about a dozen times by half a dozen people, and thrice more by Zevran on their way. Each time she shrugged the question off, but in truth she wasn’t sure at all. She would probably be better off  _ not _ revisiting the place she watched everything she knew quite literally go down in flames but hey, nobody said she was the Hero of Good Decisions or the Arlessa of Thinking Shit Through. Ferelden and Amaranthine were pretty much synonymous with ‘sloppy’ and ‘haphazard,’ which, at the very least, suited her. It was the only comfort she had about taking over Amaranthine later that year, anyway. 

In her approach, Camilla realized that she remembered the castle a little differently. In all fairness her mental image was a little distorted by nightmares that may or may not have made the already gruesome memory of Howe’s betrayal just  _ that _ much more … colorful. She didn’t realize she’d frozen solid at the gates - or that they’d even  _ arrived _ at the gates - until Zevran nudged her arm with his elbow.    
“If you are searching for the door,  _ mi amor _ , might I suggest the giant one right in front of us?”  
Camilla blinked. “Right,” she said, and started to move her lead feet though the courtyard, past the gawking gaggle of kitchen workers and repairmen, and up the stairs to the brand-new doors. She caught the assassin pausing for barely half a second before crossing the threshold into her family home. “Cold feet?”    
“No, I simply have never walked through the front doors of a castle without the intent to kill.”    
“Please don’t assassinate my brother.”    
“Old habits,  _ amor _ . I make no promises,” he joked, and she elbowed his ribs. Shitty as his sense of humor was, at least he took her mind off of whatever gruesome scene she was prepared to see on the other side of the entry.

Much to Camilla’s surprise, the great hall was… pristine, really. It had only been six, maybe seven months since Fergus moved back, and already the place was starting to come together again. Camilla shuffled awkwardly in her place; for some reason she thought she’d…  _ feel _ where Ser Gilmore had fallen. Like she’d just  _ know _ exactly where he took his last breath, or… or something like that, anyhow. There was an eerie calm about the whole space that settled over her, and all of her preparation against whatever nightmare still resided in these halls felt… presumptuous.

“Oh, hello Zevran. And -- Maker, Camilla! I almost didn’t see you standing there! Did you get  _ smaller _ ?” Camilla rolled her eyes right past her brother, who stood leaning ever-so-smugly on a polished doorframe across the room.    
“Fuck off, Fergus.”    
“Now, is that any way to talk to a Teyrn, dear sister?”    
“I technically outrank you,” she teased. “Watch how you speak to your Warden-Commander!” Fergus’s booming laughter filled the room, and for the first time since she set foot into the town something felt  _ right _ . “Zevran, I take it back. Assassinate him.”   
“You heard the Warden, Fergus. Her wish is my command.”    
“Can I at least give you a tour, first?” 

Calm as everything seemed, it was so  _ fucking _ weird getting a tour of her own house. Even weirder that she  _ still _ had absolutely no reaction to any of it. The memories that came back first were little things - the parlor where she’d smashed an egg in Fergus’s hair for being an ass, where her father had first brought Gideon in as a pup, the courtyard where Nan’s assistants ran to gossip and get away from the woman. Shoving an unpracticed blade through a Howe soldier’s neck and hearing the gurgle as he went down in the hallway was somehow secondary. She felt so…  _ other _ . Camilla, but not Cousland.  

Zevran probably saw her linger behind and slip into the stairwell to climb up to her room, but he still had Fergus to shake off. It gave her a moment to fidget in front of the door before, numb, her fingertips pressed into the wood and pushed. 

For just a moment, she was pulled right back in time. The sensation split her in two: the room was hers, and yet not. She knew all its nooks and crannies, but they no longer felt like hers to use. She felt like she was intruding on someone - a stranger, but one she’d seen every day since birth and  _ felt _ like she knew. Camilla took a tentative step forward, and then another, ignoring the odd tingling in her gut until she was able to flop backwards onto the bed, arms spread. She did not stop staring at the ceiling when, after several minutes, Zevran sat down next to her and allowed himself to fall back just short of her fingertips. He exhaled slowly. Camilla’s fingers twitched. He got away from her brother faster than she expected. 

After a few minutes of silence, the Warden-Commander sat up, ignoring the stray hairs that fell out of place and lingered around her face. Zevran watched her, sat up only when she left his line of sight to move to the door. She closed it and said, “There was a knock,” then opened it again, slowly, staring out at phantoms of men whose faces were long distorted by time and fear and rage. “They attacked, I killed them. I got dressed.” She took a couple of steps forward, and paused again. “My mother found me here.” 

Camilla did not expect Zevran to follow her to one of the doors across the hall, but he did, standing quietly behind her as she pushed it open and stared into the space. It was clean enough to look like tragedy never touched it. “We found my sister-in-law and her nephew dead in here.” She never looked back at the elf, but she could feel his eyes on her all the same. She pressed on, pointing out the places where she first heard the screaming, the place where she smelled burning flesh for the first time, where a Howe soldier stabbed her in the thigh (a clean cut; the mark was long gone). The entire time she waited for him to leave her to her own depressing play-by-play, though a part of her feared the moment that he would. He never did. Just followed her in silence as she forced the nightmares to resurface and waited for them to quicken her heartbeat, to steal her breath, to do  _ anything _ . 

But there was nothing. She had worked so hard to push her own feelings to the wayside, to not let them get in the way of fighting the Blight, that perhaps she’d just… stamped them out. Perhaps she pushed too far, too fast, too hard, and lost everything that made her who she was. Camilla Cousland was truly dead and gone with only a Warden-Commander to carry her torch, born 9:30 Dragon out of Darkspawn blood and fire. 

Scarier still, at some point, she had  _ wanted _ this. 

The excursion stopped, finally, at the larder. The woman who ran the kitchen was Nan’s blatant opposite, something Fergus must have done on purpose, though it made Camilla miss the old codger all the same.    
“Feeling peckish, Lady Cousland?” Camilla’s throat tightened, but before she could say anything to correct the woman, she felt Zevran’s hand on her arm nudge her towards the pantry.    
“The  _ Warden-Commander _ merely wishes to inspect every portion of her family’s renovated estate. I’m sure a fine woman such as yourself understands the importance of quality in such matters.” Camilla ducked through the doorway before she could hear the rest of his platitudes. His flattery would buy her enough time to … to do whatever she was trying to do, though what that was seemed to escape her. 

The door closed for only just a moment, then opened again to allow Zevran and the last of the new cook’s giggles to slip in. Camilla stood, staring intently at the spot she’d revisited so many times as the starting point of hundreds of different escape routes and the ending of hundreds of different nightmares. She let the cool air of the larder settle in around her, the smell of herbs and dried meats from which she tried to recall  _ fire _ and  _ smoke _ .    
“My father,” she said, setting her hands on her hips. “My father died right there.” Nothing. “He was right there, bleeding out. Mother sat with him and put his head on her lap.”    
“ _ Amor _ , are you sure --”    
“And I was sitting right there and Duncan was next to me.” Not even a pang. Camilla had held a  _ lot _ back over the last year, but she never thought she could sever the Cousland name so cleanly that she didn’t even feel a pinprick at the thought of her parents’ death. “I knew the castle inside and out, I told Duncan that we could - we could  _ save _ them, if only we’d tried. And he’d said  _ no _ .” He’d said no, and in that moment she  _ hated _ him, and just the memory of his pitying expression brought a familiar weight to her chest. “I - I wasn’t that strong b-but we could - w-we  _ could _ have taken them and -” 

She didn’t realize that she was crying until the sobs clawed their way from her chest and shattered her voice into pieces. As soon as he saw the slightest tremor in her shoulders, Zevran pulled her close and pressed her as close to himself as he could manage. Camilla pressed her face into his tunic to muffle her own cries, trying desperately to remain upright no matter how hard her knees wanted to give out. When they finally did, Zevran merely bent down and hooked an arm behind her legs to lift her into the air. 

Somebody  _ probably _ saw him carry her upstairs. She wasn’t sure she cared. 

In a house full of memories, Zevran was smart to bring her to a more secluded balcony. The fresh air sobered her somewhat, and Camilla was able to regain her footing and cross her arms firmly over her chest to steady the tremors. Her sobs had simmered down to sniffles, but her mind was still mostly blank, focused mostly on avoiding the assassin’s concerned gaze. He sat back on the masonry, trying to decide between giving her some space or holding her again.     
“How do you feel?” he asked, tentative.    
“I thought I’d forgotten them.”    
“Your family?”  
She nodded. “I thought - I thought I’d been fighting for them this whole time, but I felt like I’d forgotten. You don’t just  _ forget _ shit like this. That’s even scarier that remembering all of it.”    
“Have you found what you were looking for, then?” Camilla looked up at Zevran for the first time since he’d picked her up in the larder, and despite the stone still weighing on her chest she  _ immediately _ cracked an involuntary smile in his direction.    
“Yeah,” she said, and he grinned right back at her. She could feel the tears coming back, but they burned a little less and the sobs were little more than shuddering gasps, and when Zevran hopped off the ledge to come hold her again, she let herself melt into him. Her heart was still shattered, but she’d found all the pieces and, at the end of the day, there was someone to hold her tight enough to stick them all back together again. She’d never look for anything more.


End file.
